(no subject)

Maybe I'm a weirdo, but the more I listen to Jethro Tull, the more I think Ian Anderson's flute solos are sexy as hell. Lisa gets it; she's been an Ian Anderson fan since before I was born. (Yes, I was dating a woman old enough to be my mother, as she once pointed out. Age is just a number.)

And listening to Thick as a Brick on the greatest hits album on vinyl is such a perfect example of what gets lost in newer mastering techniques that push everything up until the whole track is playing practically in the red.

So much of this song is relatively quiet. Then, after "My words but a whisper, your deafness a shout," an instrumental noise slams in and out like a slap in the face; crack! then it's gone in a moment, back to the quiet vocals. Mastering by pushing everything up to the top of the scale and cutting it off with a brickwall limiter just kills that whole effect. Dead.

The tonearm on my linear tracking turntable has sticky grease, and tonight the problem was worse than before; the tonearm kept sticking on its track and the needle got stuck in one groove as if there was a scratch in the record.

I had to lift the needle, run the tonearm up and down it's track, then try a couple times to put it back down in the right place. After I got it there, I commented to Danae, "See? This is *way* better than CDs!"

At some point I need figure out how to take it apart far enough to regrease the whole slide...